Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by usrusr 2160 days ago
Drivers take almost all information they need for driving from looking through the windows, whereas pilots take almost all information from looking at the dials. That difference alone makes flying inherently more automatable. Automated driving adds a lot of sensing requirements over manual driving, but in flying the manual way already requires most of the sensing you'd need for automation.
2 comments
asdfadsfgfdda 2160 days ago
The act of controlling a plane can be done entirely by looking at gauges, but that's not the only thing a pilot does. Pilots are also interfacing with ATC, flight attendants, dispatch, maintenance, and passengers. Even if you replace these interfaces with a computer usable format, you still need someone with judgment and responsibility for the flight. Pilots exercise their judgment over the information they receive from these other sources, and to coordinate these resources for efficient, safe flight. It's a huge challenge to replace all of this with a system.
link
usrusr 2159 days ago
I don't disagree at all. If you automated all the controls you'd still have some form of plane manager.

Perhaps a far more meaningful automation push could be done by creating an entirely new ATC scheme with automation in the air and on the ground, designed not defuse the class of mistakes that are typical for humans but to work around weaknesses of automation while exploiting its strengths (relative to humans). I suspect that the error margins needed for one group have very little overlap with the error margins needed for the other and with the general multilevel architecture of existing ATC it should be possible to designate a subset of airspace to the new system and having then coexist.

link
dfcowell 2159 days ago
> whereas pilots take almost all information from looking at the dials.

Under normal operation, yes, a lot of information is available there however all pilot training is underpinned by learning to fly the plane by eye, without relying on avionics. Mainly due to the fact that they can and do fail in new and exciting ways.

Even a plane's interpretation of its own configuration can be incorrect, resulting in automated systems believing a given control plane is oriented a certain way, when the reality is very different.

link